Dolls Houses and Deja Vu

I wanted to go to the newly relaunched Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, now called Young V&A. The day before I had noticed that the D3 bus, which has a stop outside the marina goes to Bethnal Green, so I got up and hopped on it.

Travelling by bus through London is a vibe. It’s slow, because there is always traffic, so there’s time to ponder and observe. If you’re interested in how one area becomes another, it’s extremely illuminating. If you’re nosey through and through, like me, there is always the added joy of being able to listen in on the conversations of your fellow passengers. Mostly it’s too noisy on the tube. The bus is the tired flaneur’s friend. Now that my wanderings are taking me further afield, hopping on a bus is a godsend.

The D3 curves through Canary Wharf before making its way through the centre of Limehouse. It dips back to the docks, wandering through the marvellously named Wapping Wall before moving away from the water and making its way through Whitechapel to Bethnal Green.

It was a busy day on the high street as I hopped out. The famed Pellicci’s cafe, where I had hoped to bag lunch, had a long, long queue of people standing patiently in the hot sun. I wasn’t in the mood to queue today, but another day I will definitely make the trek for a cafe that has jelly and ice cream on the dessert menu.

Market stalls sold all manner of marvellous things. I heard a trader calling: ‘Haaaallllfff Priice,’ over and over in a low moo that cut through the noise of people haggling for fruit and vegetables. Clothing stalls splashed the street with vibrant colours and enough man made fabric to start a small but intense fire. The shop fronts shunted their goods onto the pavement in tumbles and rills and it was an assault course to get through without accidentally buying a washing line, a dozen sweet potatoes and a scarf.

I rounded the corner to the museum to find that I wasn’t the only person to have the bright idea of visiting that morning. The line was long and waits were 30 minutes plus. I cut my losses and dived into a side street, looking for somewhere interesting to get lunch. I ended up going to St. Margaret’s House, which is a local charity that works with the community to support creative projects. They have a gallery and cafe that seemed sweetly charming and was buzzing with people.

Sadly, I had a very sub par lunch. I chose the mezze, which seemed exciting on paper but which turned out to taste rather like paper. Paper and chickpeas. Weirdly, there were a lot of naked chickpeas but no hummus and a rather overenthusiastic serving of stringy baba ganoush. Worst of all were the falafel, which had been overcooked with zeal and tasted like hockey pucks. I ate it because I was hungry but I wasn’t happy. It was so penitential a meal that it felt like it was really good for me. I tried to take solace in the fact that my money had gone to a good cause, but I left feeling exceedingly heavy and quite resentful.

A good walk in the sunshine helped restore my equanimity. I wandered into Broadway Market over the splendidly named, Cat and Mutton bridge. I immediately knew this was the area where I should have had lunch, but it was too late, the chickpeas were still lying boulder like in my innards. I cheered myself up by going into several extremely lovely bookshops. In The Broadway Bookshop a very patient bookseller was being lectured by a donnish woman who was in the process of buying about £200 worth of books. With that amount in play he couldn’t very well shout ‘Please SHUT UP,’ but you could tell he wanted to. I finally cracked and bought a book in Donlon Books, which is an art bookshop that is full of wonder and shiny, shiny fings. I did quite well to only buy one and I felt it was justified because it was a Derek Jarman book I’d never seen before. You can’t say no to Derek. The cat or the person.

I wandered the edges of London Fields, thinking dark thoughts about Martin Amis, before moving on and buying myself an ice cream from a lady at Netil Market. We all know by now how I feel about Mr. Whippy and she had a stall called ‘Soft and Swirly.’ It had to be done. I had blackcurrant sorbet soft serve with a huge dollop of mascarpone on it and in direct contrast to my purgatorial lunch, it was a divine and positively holy experience which I intend to repeat at the earliest opportunity.

Fortified by books and ice cream, I meandered down Mare Street into Hackney proper. I thought I’d not been to Hackney before, but as I wandered past the enormous cinema I remembered that my friend Gina and I had taken the kids to see the National Trust’s, Sutton House and Breaker’s Yard a few years previously and ended up feeding them surprisingly brilliant chips in the cinema cafe. It was a bit like deja-vu and I fully expected to see myself dipping a chip into some ketchup and posting it into a grimy paw as I walked by the cafe window.

I looped back round the way I had come but taking a different route. I walked through parks and church yards, ruins and railway sidings too tired to take note of much except the buzzing of bees and drooping summer blooms duking it out with the trees determined to rush towards Autumn already. Families lounged in the grass, soaking up the sun’s afternoon rays and there was no sense anywhere that anyone was in a hurry.

I cut back onto Mare Street further down than where I had joined it, noting that I’d also taken the kids to the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities at one time and that I must go again on my own. They sell frozen absinthe at the bar there, but it’s frowned upon when in charge of small children. I passed Mare Street Market, which is a great place for food and pretending that you’re a young, successful creative with a buzzing portfolio and the stamina to go clubbing all night in a venue that’s so achingly hip nobody but you and ten friends have ever heard of it. I couldn’t pull that off when I went, because I’d got the kids with me, but everyone was very patient while we drank overpriced soda and wiped cake up the retro banquettes. I can’t pull that off now because I nod off in the dark after 8.30 at night.

Eventually I washed up outside the Young V&A again, and this time there were no queues, so I went in. My lovely friend Noreen used to work there and I’ve visited on numerous occasions before with small people in tow. This was the first time I went in solo and I had a lovely time. It’s a stunning space and it was nice to see that they had still given the building room to be the star.

I thought the new exhibits were really great. I had worried that they would take away all the charm and the interactive elements, but actually they have refined what worked and updated it without any of the nostalgia and wonder being lost. You could tell that by the parents getting misty eyed over toys they used to love and the kids running wild making and doing, playing with things and playing with each other. It is a wonderful, living, breathing space that embraces its mission to teach children through encouraging imagination and play.

It also works on adults if you let it.

My absolute best thing was a room by the artist Rachel Whiteread in which she has created a town of dolls’ houses. They are arranged in hilly masses, tumbling down from each other, winding round invisible streets. The room is made to look like it’s nighttime and some of the houses have lights on. You can imagine the lives lived behind the curtains and try to peep through the windows. It reminded me of the magic of my own, childhood dolls house and how much I believed that the family in it would come alive in the night when I was sleeping. It infused me with a bit of magic and a lot of wonder and I left with tears on my cheeks. What a day of gifts.